


The learned say it is a new creation

by gogollescent



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6399157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angelica gets a letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The learned say it is a new creation

_The morning you left us, all was wrong. Even the sunshine was provoking, with which I never quarreled before. I took it into my head he shone only to throw light on our loss: to present a cheerfulness not at all in unison with my mind. I mounted my horse earlier than common. I took by instinct the road you had taken._

She saves the letter, touched; she can picture his disgruntlement clearly. Thomas was rarely short a smile back in Paris—or a sober, hawk-eyed look that far outdid the smile. He could convert the meanest pain to warm commiseration. From there, conspiracy… But once or twice he met with woes that hurt none but himself. Then he glowered and muttered. He seemed, impossible coup, to lose track of his company, so absorbed was he in his newfound unhappiness, the dastardly accomplishment of leagues he couldn’t enter. Between the road and the sunshine. The morning puppeteering the rain.

It embarrassed her to stand beside him in those moments. She supposes it embarrassed her to be forgotten. Even before she counted him as a friend, it was distasteful, to see a mind like that at work—the real work of any mind: defensive, wild overthrow. Watchers? Proportion? 

But different to think of him in a temper while alone. On his horse in the open; no one to watch as he kneads his brow and is something quite other than charming, splendid, obscene. She reads the letter twice, thinking it over. Thomas, she decides, is at his best with his back turned. Riding on the heels of a figment—the prize his own devotion. Coming home and writing it down.

Because _he’ll_ never see it, she kisses the page. There’s a smell there that’s familiar, strong enough to cross the Channel; she dismisses it. She only wants the little figure of him. His excellent seat, which no mustered pique could alter. And “the road she had taken.” She likes to hear news of herself, already gone.

**Author's Note:**

> [From Thomas Jefferson to Angelica Schuyler Church, 17 February 1788.](http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0638)


End file.
